Businesses engaged in manufacture are constantly presented with the need to determine the inventory of parts currently available for production of complicated machinery and electrical apparatus. Miniaturization of electrical circuits and parts in the electronics and electrical-mechanical arts has evolved to the point where many of the parts used in devices such as miniature calculators, computers, watches and similar devices using computer memory storage chips, diodes, and similar elements are difficult to store and handle when the parts are in inventory or are being used in conjunction with a mass production line utilizing a large supply of the components.
Many of these electrical parts, as an example, are so tiny that they are stored on tapes which are then rolled onto supply reels for handling. The microchip or other small parts are encapsulated on the surface of a storage tape by providing a cavity on the storage tape over which another tape is placed in order to encapsulate or capture the tiny part and protect the parts from damage or destruction.
Many of these parts are individually very tiny but also quite valuable. Consequently, a manufacturer must, for tax reasons and future production reasons, keep a running account of the number of such parts in inventory. The physical problem of handling the total number of such tiny parts is extremely difficult from a bulk handling point of view. Consequently, the encapsulating storage tapes become a useful method for maintaining these parts in inventory. The tapes protect the parts, provide a supply roll of sufficient size for handling by employees. On the other hand, such storage complicates the problem of counting the parts for the purpose of identifying a total number of such parts in inventory. Further, the small size of these parts becomes a burden when the parts are placed on a manufacturing line where they are used at a rapid pace. Control of the parts in a way that protects the parts from damage or destruction is essential. Also, it is imperative that during the process of manufacturing, that the assembly operation maintain a running inventory of parts available to the manufacturing process at all times. Many electronic units contain literally thousands of tiny parts for inclusion in a single finished electrical unit. If even one of these parts is exhausted during the manufacturing process, then the entire manufacturing line will be shut down. Consequently, a manufacturer is burdened with the problem of keeping a "running inventory" of the number of parts available during the continuous manufacturing of larger electrical units.
A variety of methods have been used to keep track of the storage inventory and the manufacturing inventory of small parts. Some inventory systems rely on weight as a way of measuring the total number of small items in inventory. Each unit has a known weight which can be used to calculate the number of units from a total weight of a bulk container of such small units. The disadvantage of this weight determination system is that very expensive electronic scales must be used to make the weight checks. These electronic scales are subject to variations in the weights measured and therefore must be constantly recalibrated. Further, weight counting systems are not particularly useful and efficient in a continuous manufacturing process since some of these systems have been subject to variations due to heat, dust conditions and similar environmental conditions which would tend to give erroneous weight calculations and therefore give erroneous calculations as to the number of tiny parts in inventory.
In other operations, tiny parts are stored in packages of a finite number per package. For instance, tiny resistors might be stored in packages of fifty units per styrofoam package. These storage units are adequate for the purpose of storing the tiny components but this storage system is difficult to integrate into a continuous manufacturing system with an attendant continuous counting system designed to alert operators of continuous manufacturing processes of the current status of inventory supply to the manufacturing line.
The present invention is designed to provide an inexpensive and accurate apparatus for counting tiny parts stored on a storage tape. The apparatus can be used to count parts encapsulated on a tape which are merely held in inventory or it can be utilized to determine the remaining number of components on a particular storage tape being used on a manufacturing line.